


Finding Your Beauty

by cecilylee



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Non-Mutant, Counseling, Domestic Violence, Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Scarring, nonlinear storyline, very very light dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 04:05:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12674067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilylee/pseuds/cecilylee
Summary: Drugged up, messed up, and bruised up. Erik, Charles, and Raven intersect.





	Finding Your Beauty

It’s Raven’s fault that Charles gets into the harder stuff. She doesn’t mean it but she can’t take it back. 

She twirls around their bedroom, shared and disgustingly dingy but it’s also amazingly safe, safe from their foster father and his sudden alcohol induced whims. “I’m beautiful Charles, I’m finally beautiful.”

Charles looks lazily up from his joint, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. “You’ve always been beautiful to me.” 

Raven flinches at how painfully genuine he is, smoothes at her sweatshirt with twitchy fingers and fluffs her stringy blond hair, staring down at Charles limp figure sprawled out over the bed. “Don’t joke.”

“I wouldn’t,” Charles insists, exhaling smoke slowly. He’s gotten good enough to blow circles when he wants to. 

Raven preens herself in the cracked mirror, rubs at her inner elbow anxiously before dragging her fingers down the scars covering her left side. “Would you date me?”

“You’re my sister,” Charles says simply, as if that explains everything easily. Raven supposes it does for normal people, for those that fit in without pause, for those who don’t have to pretend day-by-day that they’re not fucking fucked up and. Well. For those who aren’t Raven. For those who don’t have to wear their fucked up for everyone to see.

Raven shrugs, collapses onto the bed beside Charles and rolls on top of him. “It’s not fair.”

“I know,” Charles says, working his fingers through Raven’s hair, because he knows Raven well enough to read her mind, knows that life isn’t fair, that she just wants to be normal, to fit in, just for once, for one day. To not be stared at when she just goes to get some milk down at 7-11.

Raven’s falling asleep when Charles says slowly, quietly, “You should do less crystal.”

Raven huffs out an annoyed breath against Charles’ bruised chin. “You should do more.”

She regrets that. She’s clean now, five months sober. Some days are harder than others. Her sponsor tells her it’s a “day-to-day battle”. 

“Right, Hank. Right.” Raven stares blankly off. She feels like she’s on the edge of a precipice, tilting forward and back, forward and back. One little push and she’ll topple off. 

Charles leans against the doorway, smiling blankly into his dealer’s eyes who smiles wryly back, “You okay there?”

Charles gives him a dry look, “If you’re not careful there I might think you’re beginning to care, Erik.”

“Aw well. Can’t have that,” Erik says, ushering him in the door. “Where’s your sister been?”

“Sober.” Charles says with a sigh. “She doesn’t think she’s beautiful anymore.” He rustles through his pockets for cash. 

Erik pulls out a ziplock correspondingly but pulls it back as Charles reaches for it. “How do you know that? Did she say that?”

Charles huffs out a breath through his nose in petulant annoyance. “I can read minds, my friend. Didn’t you know?” He taps two of his fingers against his temple. 

“Aw, well then.” Erik smirks, still holding the bag just out of Charles reach, slowly leading both of them back to the couch. Charles squared and calloused fingers scrabble for it, bitten off fingernails snagging against the plastic. “What am I thinking of?”

The back of Erik’s calves hit the couch as Charles finally catches up and he sits down heavily. Charles follows him and Erik ends up with a lapful of Charles Xavier, which he doesn’t immediately protest. Charles grabs the bag and shoves the cash down the front of Erik’s shirt. “I’m not a stripper,” Erik protests, managing to keep a gentle hold on Charles even as he tries to squirm away. He manages a subtle check for cigarette burns, bruises; knowing the telltale signs all too well.

“Well the way you’re looking at me,” Charles says cutting into Erik’s thoughts, “I’d say you’re thinking something entirely untoward.” 

Erik doesn’t correct him, lets Charles move forward and downwards to brush a dry kiss to Erik’s lips. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“Sure,” he responds easily.

Erik knows the signs of abuse backwards and forwards. It’s fairly simple when you’ve been through it yourself. You begin to notice when those around you wear dark shirts (easier to hide the blood), long sleeved shirts (easier to hide the bruises), wince away when others move too close. Charles does all of this, goes quiet and strained, tries to make himself small, when people yell (only once, another client screaming about the price and Erik had made it quite clear to that man he was not to come again). 

It makes every interaction a bit careful; never reach forward, always get him to reach for you. Let him steal the kiss, don’t steal the kiss from him. 

How does this work exactly? The abused and fucked up drug dealer isn’t supposed to fall for the abused and fucked up drugged up junky. 

Charles comes back high. 

“Do you need a ride back to your place?” Erik asks, seemingly unphased. 

Charles shrugs, uncaring.

Raven thinks that life functions as a linear progression. Abusive foster father leads to second degree burn (fuck you very much) leads to drug abuse leads to fucking up your brother’s life beyond belief. Charles insists it’s not really like that, it’s a lot more fluid, “Like the ocean,” he tells her one day.

Hank tells her she can’t blame herself. “He’s responsible for his own actions. You need to be in control of your own. Reach inside yourself for strength.” 

Sean sniggers into his elbow and rolls his eyes behind Hank’s back giving Raven a sympathetic smile. By the time Hank turns around he’s twiddling his thumbs and looking up innocently towards the ceiling. Alex is seemingly oblivious to it all but Raven notices the small smirk that he can’t quite hide.

Charles is at Erik’s doorstep again. 

Sometimes Erik has a moral crisis – to sell drugs or not to sell drugs, that is the question. It’s all a convoluted messy thought process when it comes to Charles. One, there is no doubt he is as fucked up as Erik, and as far as Erik is concerned, drugs can be a magnificent coping mechanism. Two, as far as Erik knows drugs are also pretty terrible for you, at least that’s what D.A.R.E. told him in fourth grade. Three, Erik’s pretty sure Charles could find another dealer and another dealer would not hesitate to take advantage. In what way Erik is not sure, but his mind always cycles back to that thought until he shakes it unhappily away.

Charles is climbing into his lap again, this time without reason other than to stare into Erik’s eyes, his pupils blown out and dazed. Erik wants to reach out, cup his chin, lift up Charles’ shirt to inspect the scars, but he makes do with steadying Charles’, holding on his hips lightly. He feels as if he’s trying to gentle a horse, that Charles, skittish and uncertain, may bolt at any moment. 

Sometimes Erik tries to sort out and compartmentalize people. Those around him, himself. What makes someone tick? Is it their genes? (Charles sometimes goes off on those for hours on end, fascinated with human evolution. “Why don’t you go to a university?” Erik asks. “I can’t quite tie my shoes at the moment,” Charles says drily, “I don’t think I could quite make it to class.”) Perhaps their brain chemicals. Or is there a trigger? Environmentally? Chemically? An event in their life? A sequence of events known as the human life which all lead to how fucked up you are as a human today, here and now?

Charles breath hitches when Erik moves his hands away, sets them carefully back down to his sides. “Now you are thinking entirely too much, my friend,” he murmurs, his too soft brown hair brushing over Erik’s forehead as he leans into Erik. 

Raven pushes her head into the cold air of the freezer and breathes in deeply. She presses her face up against a Lean Cuisine box, feels her nose go cold at the tip. It braces her against the pangs she sometimes has, missing being truly and deeply beautiful, missing that feeling of falling without being afraid.

Having her own apartment is freeing, amazing, safe, but also lonely and odd. Charles isn’t there. His weird science books aren’t strewn across the bedroom floor for Raven to trip over when tired or high. Or to go bump in the night when their foster father tries to get into the room to scream something unintelligible. Charles isn’t there to hold Raven and tell her she is the very prettiest no matter what anyone says, no matter what anyone thinks. He isn’t there to be Charles, dumb and smart and wonderful all at once.

Raven misses a lot of things. 

Erik holds his breath as Charles leans closer and closer and Charles breathes in, pink soft lips brushing up against Erik’s nose. “What were you thinking of?” he finally asks.

Erik lets out a sigh, turns slightly away from Charles’ probing eyes. “I thought you could read minds.”

Charles laughs, loud and real. “You’ve caught me, my friend.” 

They go silent like that, together, a long but friendly pause, Charles’ mouth still entirely too close to Erik’s for comfort. He would protest if not for the glaze to Charles’ eyes, the wince he tried to hide when he accidentally bumped his side into Erik’s kitchen table. 

“Can I ask you something?” Charles whispers overly loud, lips moving against Erik’s face. Erik nods slightly. 

“Would you let me kiss you?” Erik nods again, smiling warmly as Charles moves down, feather light, starting with a chaste kiss before delving his tongue into Erik’s mouth eagerly. 

Erik’s hands are firmly placed on the couch as he lets Charles take what he wants, take what he needs. 

Charles sets himself to exploring, reaching up to feel his biceps and then stroking the base of Erik’s exposed throat. “You can touch,” he mumbles into Erik’s mouth, before rubbing his thumb against Erik’s adam’s apple curiously. 

Erik reciprocates tentatively, pulling his hands up Charles side and then up to the back of Charles’ neck to massage tense muscles. Charles leans back with a moan at that, rolling his head before moving forward and way. Charles reaches for Erik’s shirt, making a desperate whine at the back of his throat before smoothing his hands underneath, deft fingers travelling up wiry scars to tweak Erik’s nipples. 

“I think your scars are beautiful,” Charles whispers into his mouth before licking Erik’s teeth.

Erik tries not to stutter at that, because his scars are products of a past, a past that he thinks of as anything but beautiful. Charles notices the pause and smiles at it; Erik can feel the smile more than see it with how close Charles is. “You’re thinking they’re not very beautiful considering how they were made, aren’t you?” Before Erik can protest, Charles smiles again. “But they made you who you are today. And who you are today is very beautiful.”

Erik doesn’t quite know how to argue against that logic other than he and his scars are most decidedly not beautiful. In fact he is not quite sure why Charles wants him at all, because as much as Erik might want Charles, he’s never felt he deserved those feelings to be reciprocated.

Charles is beautiful wholly and completely because he can sit in Erik’s lap battered and bruised and still laugh and still startle a laugh out of Erik. He is beautiful because even when his face is blue and purple and mottled he manages to smile at Erik and insist that everything is fine and good “my friend”. 

“I have another secret for you,” Charles informs him, when Erik has gone quiet and still. “I have scars too.” He lifts up his shirt and waits until Erik places a gentle hand on a particularly large mass of scars. Erik strokes at the soft of Charles’ belly with a feeling of dread, that he might break Charles at any moment, that Charles is much more fragile than he purports himself to be and Erik would not like to be the one to fracture him. 

Charles, apparently not understanding or caring how delicate he may be, surges forward after waiting what he seems to deem a good amount of time, licking the shell of Erik’s ear with more curiosity than sex appeal.

“No matter what you may think, or what someone may have told you, you are quite the beautiful specimen, Erik,” Charles murmurs into Erik’s ear. “Please do not let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Raven leans in Erik’s doorway, smiling in at him, tossing blond hair carelessly. “Do you have anything for me?” 

“Always for you, gorgeous,” Erik says with a flirtatious smirk. She giggles like a schoolgirl and waves someone else in through the door. 

“This is my brother, Charles. He wants to pick up some weed.”

Charles steps forward, wearing a frumpy mauve sweater and his hair tousled in a way that suggests he spent much too much time fixing it in the mirror. Erik is not impressed.

“Ah. Pleasure to meet you I suppose,” Charles says, with an overly wide smile. He reaches forward to shake Erik’s hand.

Erik hesitantly reaches forward to meet Charles’ hand, not quite knowing how to respond. “Sorry about him,” Raven cuts in. “He’s a little bit of a freak.” Charles doesn’t even look back to her, continuing his strong even handshake. 

When Charles finally lets go, Erik gives a sharp grin to Raven. “Well I’m a bit of a freak myself.”

“A matched set than,” Charles says without pause, finally looking back to Raven. “Nothing wrong with that.”


End file.
